[1] The translated poem tells the story of a marooned man on a desert island in a sequence of fourteen sections, recounting his relentless struggle for survival as well as his physical and mental disintegration.

The dense and nightmarish imagery of the poem, replete with sensations of hallucination, delirium, synesthesia, and putrefaction has drawn comparisons to Lautreamont, Trakl and Beckett.

The contradistinction between first and second death in the Apocalypse of St. John the Divine,[5] is used to allude to the gradual decomposition of the body as a state of a reduction of its life-force and in view of its ensuing annihilation.

[14] Yet, the bond between person and body ensures life still persists, and, "at that point without substance/ where the world collides and takes off",[15]: 32  the mechanical instincts of the cosmos rumble into action and sling this irreducible substance again into space - prompting, perhaps, a future regeneration.

Καὶ ἀπέθανεν ἕκαστον ἅπαξ ὅτι ἤδη ἀφῆκεν τὸ ἴδιον ξύλον, ἀλλ᾿ ὅπου πίπτει, ζήσεται πάλιν ὁμοῦ μετὰ τῶν ὑποκάτωθεν ζῴων.

The myth of the dismemberment of Dionysus by the Titans is also hinted at as the text resorts to the concept of sparagmos (Ancient Greek: σπαραγμός,[15]: Section XII, line 7  from σπαράσσω sparasso, "tear, rend, pull to pieces"), an act of rending, tearing apart, or mangling,[16]: 186  Other oblique classical references are equally embedded in the text, such as the presence of Orpheus, also suggested by images of dismemberment.

Contrary to the previous book of the trilogy, With the People from the Bridge, which makes use of predominantly bare, simple sentences in a theatrical context, The First Death is written in a dense, highly tropical style.

Often, the weightiness of surreal abstraction[17] lends a metaphysical atmosphere to the work, thus investing the ordeal undergone by the protagonist with a sublime-like quality[18] as, he, in spite of the world, continues his struggle to the limits of his powers.

Images of spoiled, rotten, maimed nature, artifacts, architecture and especially bodies are described in such rich detail they take on an eerie, atrocious, paradoxical glory.

[20] In its aligning disparate literary traditions in order to intensely depict the clash of the human subject in the midst of a hostile world, The First Death, is considered as one of the most violent works of Greek literature in modern times.